Various mining vehicles, such as rock drilling equipment, loading equipment and transport equipment, may be manned or unmanned. Unmanned mining vehicles may be remote-controlled by an operator from a control station, for instance, and they may be equipped with measuring instruments suitable for location determination. Unmanned mining vehicles may be operated automatically, e.g. driven along a desired route in the mine, as long as the location of the device can be determined. The automated operation may be carried out in a surface or underground operating area.
There may be a plurality of mining vehicles, also referred to as a fleet, operated simultaneously in the same surface or underground operating area. The fleet is monitored and controlled from a remote control station locating outside the operating area. In surface mining, the remote control station may be provided, for example, in a vehicle, such as a van, where the control station comprises computers equipped with necessary user interfaces, such as one or more displays and appropriate software. A wireless data connection is established between the remote control station and the mining vehicles belonging to the fleet. The mining vehicles send intermittently various sensor data and video describing the operations of the mining vehicle to the control station via the wireless connection. A remote operator may monitor and control the operations of the mining vehicles.
In connection with unmanned, remote controlled and automated mining vehicles, safety has to be taken into account very carefully. Typically, the unmanned mining vehicles are provided with an isolated operation area to which access by outsiders and outside vehicles is prevented in order to eliminate any risk of collision. The isolation may be provided by passage control devices equipped with sensors connected to a safety system. When a signal indicating border crossing is received from a passage control device, a mining vehicle in automated or remote operation is stopped immediately.
Also the software of the remote control stations are provided with many built-in safety functions. For activating a mining vehicle of the fleet to an automated operation mode, the remote operator has to carry out several activation stages, including introducing a new mining vehicle into the fleet, if necessary, selecting the correct mining vehicle from the available fleet, determining the operating area (e.g. a correct tunnel), activating necessary control channels over the wireless connection, etc. All these stages contribute to the safety such that no mining vehicle should be able to be activated by accident.
However, similarly to all operating systems, also the software of the remote control station is typically a compromise between safety and usability. The software may, for example, show data about all mining vehicles ever used by said remote control station, and the remote operator may just select the correct vehicle. While the overwhelming amount of data about all mining vehicles may provide advantages from the usability point of view, it inherently also poses a risk of the remote operator selecting a wrong mining vehicle to be activated.